


Lipstick on His Collar

by larkingstock



Series: prompt nonsense [13]
Category: The State Within
Genre: M/M, Nicholas's split lip is lipstick on his collar and no one can convince me otherwise, Oh No FEELINGS, Pre-Relationship, prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-18
Updated: 2020-02-18
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:20:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22786309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/larkingstock/pseuds/larkingstock
Summary: Competent as both men may be, they've had a long fortnight. Nicholas makes Mark a cup of tea.(Set late in episode 5.)
Relationships: Nicholas Brocklehurst/Mark Brydon
Series: prompt nonsense [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/937152
Kudos: 3





	Lipstick on His Collar

**Author's Note:**

> prompt: **coping badly**
> 
> The prompt nonsense series: the ongoing travails of one anon's quest to reacquire their errant writing mojo, with no guarantee of consistency, continuity, compliancy, or character appreciation.

There's the sound of a door opening and closing above. Mark's tread, heavy, in the hall, and Nicholas looks quickly down at the kitchen counter, the polite instinct to pretend he can't hear every ounce of the great big wretched world the man refuses to relinquish from his shoulders in general, and the newly added weight of one little bereft boy in particular.

_Christ._

_What kind of father am I going to be?_

Nicholas could've told him. _The best_. Kind and stubborn beyond understanding, flawed and inspiringly brilliant, a man of courage and principle who makes Nicholas feel...hope. A creeping, terrifying, transcendent hope he has no business feeling in this shabby-souled life he's long accepted, that there might be someone worth it. It's the hope of an idealistic kid he's thankful he never was, it's the foolish, romantic dreams of serving a great good he's thankful he never had. The upper limit of Nicholas's steely-eyed ideals had always been pegged at making things a small bit better for the small people, fend off the great big world grinding them up where possible. A modest goal that might actually be modestly attainable, perhaps. And now...this.

_What kind of father am I going to be?_

The kind who won't drown himself in alcohol, leaving his kid to the mercies of the world he can't handle, long before water and that world can finish the job. The kind who won't walk out on your mam for a better lay, or belt anyone in his eyeline who might remind him of how weak and pathetic he is. The kind prepared to fight to the very bitter end of losing, fight tooth and nail and take the beating, fight for his loved ones, fight for everyone who's his, fight for those who can't fight for themselves, fight for all the small people because, to him, there _are_ no small people. Nicholas is afraid it's enough to make a man believe.

"You're still here."

Mark's voice from the open kitchen doorway is flat, observation only, even though Nicholas knows being _still here_ is unexpected. He busies himself with getting out two cups, the kettle he already put on, swallowing to clear his throat before he allows himself to respond to Mark standing there exhausted and raw-eyed and with nothing left for surprise, just come down from telling his nine-year-old godson that his dad's dead.

"Cuppa?" Nicholas asks, gently.

There's a bewildered distraction to Mark's grateful nod--not, Nicholas knows, from the offer of tea, but from the sheer volume of events hammering down on him ever since exploding plane debris started raining over their heads, all of it of a sudden visibly catching up with him. Nicholas fiddles with teabags and refuses to ponder just how close they're getting to what limit the cosmos places on how many immolations he can drag a noble maniac back out of.

This is how frogs boil. The poor bastards think the water getting hotter under their arses with every additional conflagration is the only place they can imagine wanting to be...making tea. As if a cup of luckless English Breakfast and their own dubious presence is anywhere enough to minister to a man too alone in too much pain.

"Thank you," Mark murmurs, voice husky and hollowed out, wrapping his hand around the steaming cup Nicholas put in front of him. His fingers on the cup twitch, new shiny scartissue on their insides too thin to fend off the refreshed sting of heat. Nicholas suspects those fingers hadn't been bandaged properly since the plasters he himself first applied, Mark scorning to slow down even to entertain a medical professional looking at mere second degree burns. He'd only just tolerated Nicholas assessing and tending them--quickly--when he'd found him in the washroom, somewhere in the rush of cleaning themselves up from the wreck. Urging anything more had only garnered Nicholas an accusation of "clucking", and the clear message that Her Majesty's Ambassador's expectation in that moment was steady professionalism by his side, not personal concern in his face, so that's what Nicholas had done.

Now, Mark stands there with his head bowed and without bothering to remove his injured hand from this small new hurt. Nicholas reaches out, a careful touch to the Ambassador's knuckles--he thinks the two of them might have touched more in the last week than they normally would have in a year--and, in this moment, allows the much-postponed concern into his tone. "Mark--"

Mark doesn't react for a second, and when he does, it's to say in a thin, hopeless voice, "He might be mine."

Nicholas freezes, not even lifting his hand from Mark's as his mind races, pieces falling into place, the obvious conclusion confirmed even as he gets there when Mark raises his head, his eyes impossibly blue in the broken red weeping has made of them. "James, he--Saida, and I...Azzam--I don't know. I don't...He might be mine, Nicholas."

_What kind of father am I going to be?_

Nicholas doesn't even think, his hand going to Mark's shoulder, gripping him tight. As if that could be enough to hold back yet more self-blame on top of every other open wound Mark had stood straight and suffered Special Agent Blake to sucker-punch tonight, one after another like she was checking down a fucking list, as they gazed upon the accusing remains of his once-was best mate. Whose brother-in-law was assassinated mere days ago, here in DC on Mark's personal guarantee, shot by a sniper in front of Mark's eyes, dying bloody in Mark's arms.

Nicholas is not hypocrite enough to imagine he has the right to condemn or absolve any of that. Moral judgements are decidedly beyond his purview. All he can offer is his own understanding, standing with him in it and holding onto the man hard like he couldn't do at the FBI morgue.

Mark's ever-penetrating eyes flicker on his, and it makes something, some small tight aching thing crumple in Mark's face and Mark's spine and Mark's mouth. He closes his eyes and slumps, just a little, into Nicholas's grasp. Entrusting Nicholas with his weight, letting him hold him up, for just a moment.

It shouldn't, it _shouldn't_ take Nicholas every single scrap of discipline he has ever cultivated to school himself to stillness, to not react to that, utter revelation flooding through him as he stands there and holds Mark up and watches Mark take one, long, soul-deep breath under his hand, as though it's Mark's lungs breathing for the both of them. As though it's Mark's heart--

Nicholas barely manages to school his face, much less the shockingly inappropriate turmoil underneath, to anything like professional before Mark straightens himself again. But then the man looks over and gives him a foggy smile that's barely even there, tearing even deeper, bloodier into Nicholas's insides. It shouldn't take so little to make Mark grateful. It shouldn't be so easy to see him vulnerable.

It is Nicholas's _job_ to keep him from being vulnerable, for Christ's fucking sake.

He drags it together, frantically, in this quiet, warm, private moment, under a calm mask he's cultivated all his life and which he prays is not betraying him now to his dangerously perceptive boss with his equally dangerous--and dangerously endearing--blind spots. Shoving the whole mess way, way down to live with the sick little feeling at Mark's cool dismissal from his study last night--lunging back up at his throat all unwarranted tonight at Mark snapped "I trust her!" over his own people who he evidently can't--feelings, all of them, that Nicholas doesn't have the luxury of, even if there weren't the present avalanche of greater needs bearing down on them.

Because Mark's right. If Warner's band of body-dropping gremlins are desperate, reckless, or plain up-their-arses arrogant enough to kill Borisvitch and Sinclair like this to get their war, then there's no longer any reason to believe they'll stop short of _anyone_. Even the sacrosanct British Ambassador with his new innocent young ward.

Nicholas's mouth flattens.

He has work to do.

He makes himself release Mark's shoulder. "I should go," he says. Gathering himself, nimbly girded by the demands of his work. It's hardly the first time. But in all his years of closing his job about himself like impenetrable armour, it is by far the hardest time. "Find out what I can, where we are." And, while he's at it, cut loose a relationship that's reaching the end of its utility.

And Mark--Mark simply _nods_. Fully trusting in Nicholas to have his back as they move forward.

The flood of relief Nicholas feels at that goes straight to his knees, threatening to disassemble him all over again, he can't remember the last time he was ambushed by his own damned feelings like this. Jamming it down further, he forcibly reroutes--asks, "When does Jane land?"--hoping she's okay, to close at least one open loop before he goes and leaves Mark to his privacy, to his grief and his wounds and his tea.

But Mark only blinks at him. A blankness of expression that's swiftly stained through with one more silent crack of guilt, and Nicholas knows without a shadow of a doubt that, for this moment, Mark had forgotten. Before Nicholas can say anything--much less grab the man tight, shake him and somehow make him fucking _understand_ that it's okay, he's allowed to be human, to take a moment, not everything is all on him all the time, it doesn't mean he doesn't care--Mark clears the crackle in his breath and checks his watch. "6:30 London time."

Several more hours, then. Nicholas eyes the graceful, mindful aplomb that's come back full force, as much a part of Mark and as much his armour as ruthless duty is for himself, and it doesn't give away so much as a crack. Nicholas lets his mouth soften just a little, a fine-judged approach of wry amusement and entreaty. "Do me a favour. Get some sleep?"

Mark gives him a narrow look--an opening Nicholas can work with.

"Don't give me that, sunshine. I'll cluck all the fuck I like. Get some god-damned sleep."

Mark's bark of laughter might be the best thing Nicholas has heard since this whole disaster came crashing down literally on their heads. He grins, unwisely--an opening for an opening--an infinitesimal pull of pain at his lips.

It catches Mark's eye before Nicholas can hide it and Mark grimaces, staying in the moment like he hasn't even really registered Nicholas trying to take his leave, trying to go and do his job, the job he needs to do for him. His attention dwelling on the split he'd inflicted, like Nicholas's freshly re-opened bloody mouth is more important, or even pertinent to anything in the slightest, like Mark's too tired to keep regret at all, all, all the other damage from bleeding over to this one, too. And Nicholas should be taking his leave and instead he's just standing there, in a quiet, warm, private moment, with all his spycraft and experience and lack of foolish romantic dreams and no idea how to stop it when Mark lifts his hand, without quite seeming to realise he's doing it, and brushes his thumb ruefully over the cut.

Nicholas doesn't move. Barely breathes, just stands there as Mark touches him and doesn't apologise for what he'd done any more than Nicholas had. But it's there in his touch and his face just the same, acknowledgement for how he'd hurt him and belief in the thing at the time and willingness to carry it, consequences and all. The uncompromising resolve to get up and keep going, come what may, to plant himself best he can in shifting sands and stand, do _better_. His fingertips resting under Nicholas's jaw, tea-cup hot, simmering inside skin, creeping, terrifying.

Transcendent.

Nicholas has become quietly certain it's enough to make a man fall in love.

He puts his hand on Mark's, pulls it gently away before he allows himself the indecent swallow his wounded mouth wants. Shakes his head at him, firmly: _It's okay. Don't worry about it. We're good._ Less by far than what Mark forgave _him_ for. Releases his hand as though this were quite routine tender, intimate reassurance between colleagues in trying circumstances, and once more reconstructs his armour with a brisk, parting nod at his boss. Heads out, resolutely, to what, in this moment, he _can_ cope with.

Nicholas has _work_ to do.


End file.
